Fujitsu Limited, Oracle Corporation, and Oracle Corporation Japan announced that they have agreed to form a new strategic alliance to deliver enterprise-grade, world-class cloud services to customers in Japan and their subsidiaries around the world.

In order to take advantage of cloud computing to speed innovation, reduce costs and drive business growth, organizations need IT partners that can deliver the performance, security and management capabilities that are demanded by enterprise workloads. To help organizations in Japan capitalize on this opportunity and confidently move enterprise workloads to the cloud, Oracle Cloud Application and Platform services-such as Oracle Database Cloud Service and Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud - will be powered by Fujitsu's datacenters in Japan. Under the new strategic alliance, Fujitsu will work to drive sales of robust cloud offerings to companies in Japan and their subsidiaries around the world.

John blogs, "The furious pace of construction going on today in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is a physical manifestation of the region's excitement as it looks forward to hosting a World Expo in 2020.

Oracle has a construction project of its own going on in the region: a state-of-the-art data center, located in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, reflecting Oracle's excitement about the business potential of the Middle East..."

Francois writes in Forbes, "It may not be fashionable to say so, but cloud computing has in many cases simply compounded existing problems without fulfilling its cost-cutting and innovation-driving promise.

Cloud computing has opened new vistas for small companies as well as for departments within larger companies. But while it has empowered business leaders to get around certain budgetary and organizational constraints, uncoordinated cloud purchases have also left a welter of new organizational and budgetary problems in their wake..."

Margaret writes in Forbes, "Even companies with a brilliant digital strategy risk falling into the abyss because what actually takes up their time and attention day to day has little to do with their strategic vision..."

'In any organization, systems are optimized to perpetuate today and not to create tomorrow-and in some cases, this leaves CEOs virtually powerless,' says Scott Anthony, managing partner of international consulting firm Innosight, who spoke at Oracle's recent Modern Finance Experience conference in Singapore. 'If you don't grab hold of all those systems that are really deep in an organization, all you do is do today better, but you never do tomorrow different.'

"Artificial Intelligence or AI as it popularly called is surely and steadily working its way to become more like humans. We have had an AI which injured its host will fully while another AI robot ran out of its enclosure in Russia. Now another AI has successfully managed to beat an ace fighter pilot in a combat simulation. Recently, an artificial intelligence (AI) named ALPHA developed by a University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate went up against retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Gene Lee in a high-fidelity air combat simulator. The result, the Colonel lost..."

"In my last column, I wrote about the need to 'understand the normal' - that is, when faced with a complex security incident, to know whether each step in the incident is normal for that user. It sounds obvious; of course it's valuable to know whether someone is acting in an unusual manner. However, creating context is much more difficult in practice.

Data volumes are growing quickly, often so quickly that it's not possible to store enough historical data to support an investigation. At the same time, firms have replaced employees with temp workers, contractors, and outsourcers, many of whom turn over on a regular basis. This flux makes it harder to identify actual users, let alone each user's normal behavior. Simply put, the pace of change and growth prevents most large organizations from understanding normal and abnormal behavior..."

"Discussing the pros and cons of artificial intelligence is, to be sure, an emotional topic.

People have feared artificial intelligence (AI) almost as soon as it was invented. Hollywood in particular has done a masterful job of stoking those fears with movies like "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Terminator" and "The Matrix" all making AI systems into demonic forces.

Most recently, renowned scientist Stephen Hawking told Larry King he thought humans and AI could "co-exist," but that "a rogue AI could be difficult to stop" without appropriate safeguards in place. Coming from someone like Hawking, that kind of warning carries some weight with people..."

Oracle and Fujitsu have announced a partnership designed to push enterprise cloud computing solutions forward.

Earlier this week, the tech giants said Oracle Cloud Application and Platform services -- such as Oracle Database Cloud Service and Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud -- will now be powered by Fujitsu's data centers in Japan.

As part of the companies' agreement, Fujitsu will also push Oracle cloud solutions to enterprise clients in the country and beyond.

John Priest blogs, "This is another blog in the series to give the Oracle VM community some additional information on the 3.4 release that we delivered earlier this year. The topics that we covered in previous Oracle VM 3.4 blogs include:

Oracle VM 3.4 Performance Gains

Oracle VM 3.4 Dom0 Enhancements

Solutions with Command Line Interface

Integrating Oracle VM with Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux

Oracle VM Hierarchical Viewer

This week, we are going to share a little more information on some of the Ease of Use Enhancements that were delivered with this updated version of Oracle VM..."

"Organizations may view true software defined storage (SDS) software as only appropriate to host their tier two and tier three applications. However, many known and named accounts now use SDS software to host their tier one applications. In this third and last installment of my interview series with Nexenta's Chairman and CEO, Tarkan Maner, he explains where SDS software initially gets a foothold in organizations and why it rapidly gains traction and moves up to host tier one applications..."

"The traditional file system-and-database web backend is no longer adequate, and must make way for storage systems that manage unstructured data. In this article we will learn about the differences between structured and unstructured data, and why web storage backends must evolve to manage unstructured data.

Traditionally, web applications use file systems and databases to store user data. This is simple to manage, as web applications generate structured data by accepting text input in forms, and saving the input to a database. However, times are changing; with the advent of social media, cloud storage, and data analytics platforms, increasing quantities of unstructured data are being pushed onto the Internet..."

"A survey revealed the most common storage challenges facing IT professionals today - and it's no surprise that meeting capacity and performance demands, and containing costs, top the list of complaints.

Nearly 200 people responded to the survey, conducted by ioFABRIC Inc. on Spiceworks, Inc., the social and professional network for tech workers.

IT pros said their biggest frustrations by far are capacity limitations (34%) and high costs (29%), followed by delivering appropriate performance (15%)..."

As flash technology has matured, our understanding of how to speed up storage has evolved immensely, but slowly. It took the industry a while to realize that we'd gone from balanced systems where 1 Gigabit Ethernet networks were fast enough for hard-drive storage to an environment where the array controllers, RAID cards, and networks were all way too slow to keep up with solid-state drives, each delivering 40K IOPS or more. Vendors have tried to keep RAID arrays relevant with hybrid arrays that replaced some HDDs with SSDs, but it's become clear that we need to go in a different direction..."

"'The Infra Innovation Circle' was released in December 2015, and if you haven't read it yet I encourage you to take a look. Over the last few week's I have been spotlighting some of the feature articles.

Here is the one from our experts Hans van Heffen, Neil Draper and Marcel Kolkman that talks about the future of storage technology and how to keep pace with the rate of technology innovation.

The pace of innovation in the storage market is fast and increasing. Technology cycles that once played out over three-to-five years now take 18-24 months. A recent arrival is software-defined storage (SDS), which presents opportunities for businesses to be more agile and grow quickly..."

"In the spirit of the past week's Independence Day celebrations in the United States, eWEEK in this slide show offers some practical ways for IT managers and storage administrators to free themselves from the tyranny of slow-moving storage data movement. Let's face it: Information technology is nothing if not all about speed. Fast data access is critical for a competitive enterprise because productivity slows down markedly when applications - and people - have to wait for data..."

"The news last week that the owner of a Tesla Model S was killed after the car crashed into a tractor-trailer while its Autopilot feature was engaged raises an obvious question: is the self-driving technology safe?

The accident, however, raises an equally important question. Are people prepared to responsibly use semi-autonomous driving technology?

The accident, which took place May 7 in Williston, Fla., is the first known fatal crash involving a vehicle using autonomous technology based on computer software, sensors, cameras and radar. The Florida Highway Patrol identified the driver who was killed as Joshua Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio..."

"Skeptical about all the hype around 3D printing technology? We ain't seen nothin' yet, says SearchCIO columnist Harvey Koeppel.

The buzz about 3D printing comes with the usual pontification that occurs every time a new technology passes the novelty stage into the realm where real money can be made. Canalys, a market research firm, predicts the global market for 3D printers and services will grow from $2.5 billion in 2013 to $16.2 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of 45.7%..."

"The price of Bitcoin has been somewhat stable lately with charts showing slight variances here and there over the past week. The anticipation for the upcoming halving event seems to have cryptocurrency supporters excited, while global economic events continue to show the world the benefits of the Bitcoin network..."

"In a proposal today, the European Commission - the executive arm of the European Union - sought stricter rules on the use of virtual currencies like bitcoin.

Citing reasons of terrorism and money laundering, the European Commission has proposed stricter rules for the use of virtual currencies, an official press release revealed today.

The changes will see digital currency exchanges and wallet providers fall under the purview of the Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD). Such a move will seek to bring an end to the anonymity associated with digital currency transactions..."

"Blockchain Engine and Petrodvorets Watch Factory have introduced blockchain technology into the manufacturing process of Raketa watches, making Raketa one of the first companies in the world to record the production of physical goods in the blockchain.

Established by Peter the Great in 1721, Petrodvorets Watch Factory is one of Russia's oldest businesses..."

"Is blockchain poised to forever change the way we approach computing? Or is it something that will remain associated with cryptocurrency?

Don Tapscott sees blockchain as something huge and pervasive. In a recent interview hosted and posted by McKinsey & Company, Tapscott, coauthor of Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World, suggests it will change the world -- in ways never envisioned as the Internet developed..."

"Very shortly, there will be an important scheduled change in the way bitcoin is generated. The rate at which new bitcoin is created will halve, an event popularly referred to as "the halving".

At the time of this writing, 3,600 BTC ($2.4m) are generated every day. This will be slashed to 1,800 BTC per day ($1.2m), and the rate will never ever increase.

Taking this into account, and some basic economics, we should be able to make predictions about how the perception of bitcoin may change, but since the perception of bitcoin is almost entirely irrational, save for the thinking of a handful of very clever men, it is almost impossible to predict how people will react to the halving..."

"Currently, there are 705 cryptocurrencies out in the wild being traded every single day. For seven years, Bitcoin has remained the top gun of all the various altcoins within the industry, and there are many reasons why this is the case. Let's take a look at why there's a good chance this will continue for a while..."

"Bitcoin exchange and platform Coinbase has announced new investment and partnership with the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (BMTU), Japan's biggest bank. The endeavor will see Coinbase look toward expansion efforts in Japan and Asia.

Bitcoin exchange and services platform Coinbase will raise $10.5 million from Japanese investors today with the aim to launch services in Japan. Currently, Coinbase only has an Asian presence in Singapore..."

"The much anticipated Bitcoin-Halving Day is approaching fast with less than 300 blocks to go until the reward changes for miners. Expectations for this event have been quite massive, with many predicting a surge in price. Meanwhile, others are holding events to celebrate this milestone in Bitcoin's life..."

"Our technology conversations with larger enterprises often start with a complaint that their site is hard to update or a simple change takes weeks because they have to go through IT or wait for a software update from the vendor. The result is a frustrated marketing team, hampered IT capacity, and, most importantly, missed opportunities for the business.

In most cases, the cause of this situation is that the underlying technology is a proprietary content management system..."

'Docker changes the way an organization delivers software in ways that haven't been done in a generation.' JAXenter editor Gabriela Motroc talked to Matt Saunders, Principal Consultant at Contino and JAX DevOps speaker, about containers as a technology and what it means to adopt technologies such as Docker...

"Agile discipline is in the process of taking over much of the enterprise world. It's not only because executives like saying their organization is agile. It's because agile discipline in its various incarnations can work very well for companies looking to be responsive to customers and nimble in the face of changing business conditions..."

"CIOs and IT leaders share their advice on what enterprises can do to accelerate the spread of DevOps within their organisations..

Seasoned DevOps practitioners are fond of advising newcomers to kick-start their organisation's agile journey by starting small - both in respect of the size of project they undertake and the team they task with addressing it.

From there, they can work through the organisational challenges that inevitably arise when creating multi-disciplined teams (including developers, operations staff and people fulfilling other IT functions), before shaping how their continuous delivery pipeline will operate..."

"As tempting as building your own DevOps incident communication tool sounds, you should think twice.

My colleagues and I recently were on the phone with a company seeking an IT incident communications and collaboration solution (a.k.a. IT alerting) to eliminate the time wasted with inefficient communications between teams when dealing with major IT issues. We were talking to Jeff, the director of IT operations, and Alec, the incident manager, about how our customers benefit from using IT service alerting solutions to automate the communication to their Dev and Ops teams, the stakeholders and the impacted customers every time a major IT incident is identified..."

Francisco blogs, "Examples are a great way to learn new things. As many of you may or may not know we've added some new things to MySQL Server 5.7.12 and the ecosystem around it, extending it to allow you to use the MySQL as a Document Store. Meeting the challenge meant expanding Developer Interfaces and Database tools.

Addressing information with a both classic and modern data architectures

For all types of data - structured, semi, and unstructured

Empowering developers - Simpler, Faster, Flexible

Leveraging latest NoSQL oriented tools/methods - JavaScript, Node.js, JSON, CRUD, Methods chaining, and more
From the developer side the MySQL Document Store new APIs by introducing a JSON/Document Store oriented called the MySQL X DevAPI..."

"The notion how cloud computing solutions are being driven primarily by reduced costs, and that they're causing IT teams to shrink everywhere seems to be significantly in the 'myths' area.

A new report by Six Degrees Group (6DG) seems to point out that there are other, more important reasons businesses opt for cloud solutions, and that teams are not necessarily shrinking, but reshaping, mostly..."

"Many businesses are migrating existing applications to the public cloud. Here are the key considerations you should make before selecting apps to migrate to the cloud...

I think we are finally beyond the conversation on the utility of public cloud in the enterprise. Public cloud service providers have demonstrated that public cloud is just as reliable, if not more so, than on-premises infrastructures..."

"Cloud management software is a still maturing market, so there are a number of factors to consider before buying one...

Managing clouds can be a challenge given that virtual machines and storage are running in two different environments simultaneously. A crowded industry of cloud management platforms (CMP) has emerged to help.

Here are four tips from Cancila for organizations considering cloud management products..."

"Research firm IDC forecasts strong spending on IT infrastructure for cloud environments in 2016, particularly public cloud environments, despite the slowdown in spending in the first quarter...

The first quarter of 2016 may have shown some softness in hyperscale cloud service provider (CSP) demand for IT infrastructure products for deployment in cloud environments - server, enterprise storage and Ethernet switches - but it's coming back with a vengeance in the second half, according to the latest forecast from IDC)..."

"The latest version of Cloudify open source multi-cloud orchestration software - Cloudify 3.4 - is now available. It brings pure-play cloud orchestration to every major public and private cloud platform - Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google Compute Platform (GCP), OpenStack andVMware - as well as cloud native technologies like Kubernetes and Docker. The software is at work across multiple industries and geographies, and it has become a preferred orchestrator for telecom providers deploying network functions virtualization (NFV)..."

"With all the hype about 'moving to the cloud', at some point you wonder: is it really worth it? From my experience as the CEO of mobile performance marketing platform ClicksMob, the answer is unequivocally, yes, but only with the proper service and the proper 'know-how'.

In mid-2015, we decided to make the leap and migrate to the cloud with the help of Amazon Web Services, or AWS. The decision was a natural choice for a company bursting at the seams to fill a 400 per cent spike in consumer demand. Without a doubt, it has proven to be a worthwhile endeavour having kick-started improvements in scalability, agility, cost-efficiency and overall high performance..."

"Every company may be a software company now, but that doesn't mean you have to build it all yourself. When can you buy the same standard apps your competitors use? Why should you invest in building your own? And when you do build, how little code can you get away with? We explain..."

"Almost two thirds of businesses still don't know the value of critical data assets being targeted by cybercriminals.

IRM surveyed security heads at their recent conference, and found that just 28 per cent of CISOs regularly conduct exercises to categorise and value the data within their IT estate in order to evaluate the risk associated with its loss. 55 per cent have taken partial action, while 17 per cent had taken no action at all..."

"If you have an application that is no longer supported by its developer, or an app that will only run on an older version of your operating system, this blog post is for you. That app needs to die, as it's only a ticking bomb.

What's wrong with older applications, you say? Technically, the application is fine. It's just a series of files that need to get backed up. However, the data created by said application can be a real problem. More importantly, using that data in the future can be quite difficult..."

"The cloud is now a mainstream IT platform. Through its unlimited economies of scale and its ability to deliver IT resources dynamically whenever users need them, the cloud's popularity permeates through businesses of all sizes and industries.

While they enjoy cloud benefits, many in IT still feel challenged to fully secure the new platform. There might be one or more cloud services linking to your corporate and partner network, all being accessed by both mobile and traditional users. How can you enforce internal policies and industry compliance mandates when there's no longer an identifiable network perimeter?..."

"Transforming your business to a digital operation requires a dedicated professional who thrives as a change agent, a.k.a., a chief digital officer. Here's how to determine whether or not your organization can benefit from another executive in the new C-suite..."

"Putting one person in charge of digital readiness won't work, says CEB's Andrew Horne, but that doesn't mean CIOs don't play a pivotal role in digital transformation.

Across all industries, digitization is seen as a competitive necessity. In fact, 87% of senior business leaders report that it is a priority for their company.

To support digital readiness, some organizations have created dedicated digital leadership roles such as chief digital officers (CDO). But enterprise digital initiatives should be the responsibility of the entire executive leadership team, not just one individual..."

"Cybersecurity has long been a tough issue for CIOs to tackle. In today's increasingly complex web of data and cloud-based tools and BYOD, however, those challenges have greatly intensified, according to the 2016 Harvey Nash/KPMG CIO Survey, the Creative CIO. One startling finding from the new survey was that only a fifth (22 percent) of CIOs feel confident their organization is very well prepared to identify and respond to cyber-attacks, compared to nearly a third in 2014..."

"Earlier this month, a monkey caused a nationwide power outage in Kenya. Millions of homes and businesses were without electricity. Which just goes to show that 'not all disasters come in the form of major storms with names and categories,' says Bob Davis, CMO, Atlantis Computing..."

"I just read an interesting article about Google spending years trying to figure out the winning formula for successful teams. It ended up like this - just be nice. I've stated that 'Nice Guy Project Managers Finish First' and it turns out that I was right! So let's now look at this a slightly different way...how being nice can be the key to running successful projects and having cohesive, successful teams.

I'm going to examine this from what I consider to be several project, team and customer success determiners and why the nice team approach works..."

"How ownership of a Project Management issue should be a shared responsibility, as seniority or rank does not give you exclusivity on solutions...

As you climb the IT Project Management career ladder you may find that your experience and seniority brings you benefits that you didn't enjoy back at the start... Rank has its privileges after all. However, could it also have its problems?..."

"Projects succeed only if your team is strong, and project teams are strong only if they have effective communication strategies.

Project teams are in a constant state of communication via email, videoconferences, telephone calls, texts, face-to-face discussions and even nonverbal interactions. Whatever media they use, project teams will increase their chances of achieving their goals if they develop successful strategies for keeping everyone informed about what's going on.

Here are some tips for communicating effectively during the course of a project..."

"The Internet is truly one of humankind's greatest technological achievements. It is testament to our ingenuity and desire for a more connected world. Despite growing more reliant on this technology each passing day, many people are still in the dark when it comes to how the internet works. Sure, they know that it operates through a collection of networks and infrastructure that connect to each other, but most people are unaware of the behind-the-scenes technologies and innovations that make the internet perform as well as it does today.

Here are seven of these 'invisible' technologies that the internet cannot live without:..."

"When software-defined networking (SDN) first blasted its way onto the scene, many experts pointed to the classic '30/30/3' problem as the reason for its existence. The problem, if you aren't familiar, is a generalization of the relationship between data growth, IT costs, and revenue. It posits that the problem with IT is that data and IT costs grow at 30%, while revenue experiences much smaller growth, only 3% a year..."

"The Internet of Things (IoT) is the natural evolution of mobile, network, sensor, and embedded technologies; a nervous system which can connect anything with everything. If Cisco's prediction of 507.5 Zettabytes globally generated IoT data by 2019 is anything to go by, the landscape of Internet of Things is most certainly the next frontier for software developers. Similar to the alchemists of antiquity, who sought to transform base metals into gold or find synergy between objects, IoT developers

"Sensing some of the lies about the Internet of Things is a vital first step to implementing it...

The Internet of Things (IoT) may be a phrase suffering from over-use, but it nonetheless represents a huge opportunity for all types of established businesses with a drive for innovation.

While in Gartner's view, the IoT may have risen to the 'peak of inflated expectations', this year's Strata + Hadoop World (London) event, where the focus was on big data strategy and technology for business, demonstrated how there is a definite eagerness to hear about what works in the real world, alongside a desire to learn some less comfortable truths about technology..."

"The proliferation of IoT devices in the workplace presents a huge security risk and if new research from ForeScout Technologies is anything to go by, organisations are ill-prepared to deal with this rise and the associated threat. Even worse, by the time some of the IoT devices reach businesses, they are already vulnerable due to the lack of industry regulations and current approach to development. In order to stem the security issues with IoT applications and devices, there needs to be a step change in the development process. It has simply never been more important that these devices and platforms be developed securely in the first instance..."

"The Internet of things (IoT) is undoubtedly the biggest wave of technology since the advent of cloud services more than a decade ago. Estimates of the size of the IoT products and services market by various analysts in the next three to five years range wildly from $50 billion to $200 billion worldwide; this takes into account all the connected devices, sensors, cameras and other information-gathering things that are expected to go online by 2020 to 2022..."

"When personal computers were introduced, few manufacturers worried about security. Not until the early 1990s did the need for security become widely understood. Today, the Internet of Things (IoT) is following the same pattern -- except that the need for security is becoming obvious far more quickly, and manufacturers should have known better, especially given the overwhelming influence of open source..."

"Open source big data technologies like Hadoop have done much to begin the transformation of analytics. We're moving from expensive and specialist analytics teams towards an environment in which processes, workflows, and decision-making throughout an organisation can - in theory at least - become usefully data-driven. Established providers of analytics, BI and data warehouse technologies liberally sprinkle Hadoop, Spark and other cool project names throughout their products, delivering real advantages and real cost-savings, as well as grabbing some of the Hadoop glow for themselves. Startups, often closely associated with shepherding one of the newer open source projects, also compete for mindshare and custom..."

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) represents the first release from Canonical to deliver long-term support since 2011 (version 14). While the latest improvements may not be entirely revolutionary, Ubuntu 16.04 rounds up exciting features to fortify the server base and enhance the desktop experience. InfoWorld reviewed the new desktop release in April. In this review, I'll focus on the server..."

"Installing a new server usually involves copying over config files and glue scripts from another server until things "work". Subtle problems may persist if a particular condition appears infrequently. Any improvement is usually made on an ad hoc basis to a specific machine, and there is no way to apply improvements to all servers or desktops easily.

Finally, in typical scenarios, all the learning and knowledge invested in these scripts and configuration files are scattered throughout the filesystem on each Linux system. This means there is no easy way to know how any piece of software has been customized..."

"July 4, 2016, Ronald Henderson has announced the release of a new version of the Fedora-based Network Security Toolkit (NST) Linux distribution for network security analysis and monitoring.

Network Security Toolkit (NST) 24-7977 is now the latest version of the computer operating system used by numerous sysadmins around the world to monitor and analyze the security of various computer networks. As its version number suggests, the new Network Security Toolkit version is based on the recently announced Fedora 24.

However, it looks like this Network Security Toolkit release is powered by the latest and most advanced Linux 4.6.3 kernel, which also hit the Fedora 24 Linux software repositories last week, as the upstream distribution was initially introduced with a kernel from the Linux 4.5 series. Linux kernel 4.6.3 includes support for the latest hardware devices..."

"When a data center is running at its limits, an organization has tough calls to make. To buy time and plan what's next, consider some modest upgrades to cooling, power and more...

When your data center runs out of space, power or cooling -- or all three -- you have some difficult decisions to make. Those deliberations become more challenging if your business is likely to move within the next several years, or if there are discussions about eventually transferring some computing to the cloud or to a hosting site. These decisions are important, and not ones you want to rush. The choices an organization makes, after all, could be costly -- in both capital outlay and operational effectiveness..."

"The recent reports of a Cerber zero-day ransomware attack that targets Office 365 may have your organization feeling a bit fearful about your cloud deployment -- or swearing off the idea of ever migrating to the cloud. After all, if you read the reports, you would think the number of Office 365 users affected by the attack, which is a variation of a Cerber attack reported in March, ranged into the millions.

"One of the biggest challenges in IT security is determining whether the tools and configurations you have in place are giving your organization the level of security you require. Here's how penetration testing can help...

The IT security landscape is a complex maze of technologies, architectures, and policies that can be incredibly difficult to navigate. A defense-in-depth strategy consists of any number of security tools working in conjunction to form an overall security posture. One of the biggest challenges is determining whether the tools and configurations you have in place are giving your organization the level of security you require. A penetration test, or "pen test," is one way to accomplish this..."

"Does the screen above look familiar? It should. Millions of people around the world connect to public Wi-Fi networks on their mobile devices as they travel and try to stay connected. The problem is, not all networks are official. The image above is that of a fake, or spoofed, hotel Wi-Fi network, but you can't tell just by looking at it.

This attack is called a Man-in-the-Middle attack, as many in the security industry will recognize, and allows a person to intercept another person's internet connection and gather all of the information being transmitted across that network. This kind of attack has been around for years, impacting PC users, but today the mobile phone is just as susceptible.

David Richardson, director of product at Lookout, walks us through this all-too-common attack..."

"Ransomware has grabbed mainstream media attention recently but it's nothing new - in fact, its origins can be traced back to floppy disk times. Part of ransomware's new found notoriety is certainly due to the criminals' latest target of choice, the healthcare industry, which is considered sacrosanct to most. And ransomware's very nature lends itself to news-worthy headlines..."

"As the volume of data companies generate and need to keep balloons, the top cloud providers have come up with a type of cloud service that may replace at least some portion of the market for traditional backup products and services. Cold storage delivered as a cloud service is changing the way organizations store and deliver vast amounts of information. The big question is whether cold storage can provide for better backup economics.

Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and since April also Microsoft Azure now offer cloud cold storage services. Each has a different approach, so how do they stack up against each other?.."

"Penetration testers must have an innate curiosity of how networked systems work coupled with a solid understanding of IT operations. It also helps to be able to think like an attacker.

Although penetration testing might be viewed as one of the more glamorous jobs in cybersecurity - think of Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible hacking into a CIA computer while dangling horizontally from cables in a heavily protected room - it might come as a surprise to learn that one of the challenges of the profession is fighting 'boredom.'..."

"So goes the opening line of the well-known phone scam, where a person calls purporting to be a help desk technician reaching out to resolve your computer problems. These Windows scammers feed off people's concerns about data breaches and identity theft to trick them into installing malware onto their machines. The scam has been netting victims for years, despite the fact that none of what the callers say makes sense..."

"The deadline for switching to chip-based card readers was last October, but most merchants still have not upgraded and are now liable for point-of-sale payment card fraud

The cost of paying for fraudulent credit card transactions, previously covered by the credit card companies, shifted to the retailers themselves last October -- unless they upgraded their payment terminals to accept new chip-based cards.

According an April report by The Strawhecker Group, small and midsized merchants saw a 31 percent increase in the number of chargebacks right after the liability shift took effect..."

"While CIOs say they expect to see a slight dip in IT hiring plans for the last six months of this year, according to resent survey results, one tech recruiter says the outlook appears positive. Here's a closer look at CIO hiring plans for the remaining months of 2016, including layoffs, the most in-demand IT skills, and the hottest regions..."

"A survey of IT executives, managers, and practitioners finds the biggest challenges in infosec are around skills, not technology.

When the subject is security, the conversation tends to center on spending. But, according to the results of a new survey sponsored by cloud security vendor SkyHigh Networks and conducted by the Cloud Security Alliance, budget is only one of the issues concerning IT executives when it comes to protecting data and networks in the age of the cloud and mobility..."

"Everyone has a bad day at work now and then, but when those bad days start to outnumber the good ones, it's time to consider looking for a new job. As the economy continues to improve, there's no reason to stay with a company that's struggling to survive, or to settle for a role in which you're not happy, says Howard Seidel, Partner at executive leadership and career consulting firm Essex Partners..."

"Analysis Containers are the cool toy meaning two things: new technology and hype.

At heart, containers are simple: group the minimum set of files needed to run a particular program into a single directory tree, then run it with some kind of isolation mechanism, so that as far as that process is concerned, it's the only thing on the computer. No virtual hardware, so almost no overhead and lightning-fast startup and shutdown. The only additional element is a bit of metadata describing how the container talks to the rest of the system..."

"The new version of the at-scale container management framework adds better support for increasingly critical container behaviors like persistency...

Kubernetes 1.3, the latest major revision of Google's container cluster management system, debuts today. It's available as an open source project on GitHub and in Google Cloud Platform's Container Engine service.

The new features speak to some of the latest issues involving containers today and Google's long-term plans for a hybrid cloud built with their services..."

"Docker containers are getting all the press, especially in the wake of DockerCon 2016. But Docker's not the only show in town. Lest we forget the other container platforms that are out there, here's a look at the current state of the container ecosystem as a whole, from Docker to CoreOS to LXC and LXD.

We'll start with Docker. It's the most popular container platform and company right now. It's also the one with the deepest pockets, with $180 million in funding so far..."

"A recent Evans Data report shows that 36 percent of developers working with big data and analytics are also using machine learning.

With the explosion of big data and companies mining it for analytics and insights, developers are working on more big data projects than ever.

In fact, more than a third - 36 percent - of all developers who are working on big data or advanced analytics projects are using elements of machine learning, according to a recent Evans Data study on big data and advanced analytics..."

"Big Data is Big News, a Big Deal, and Big Business, but what is it, really? What does Big Data even mean? To those in the thick of it, Big Data is obvious and I'm stupid for even asking the question. But those in the thick of Big Data find most people stupid, don't you? So just for a moment I'll speak to those readers who are, like me, not in the thick of Big Data. What does it mean? That's what I am going to explore this week in what I am guessing will be three long columns..."

"Data is great isn't it? It's nice to look at all those amazing dashboards that your business application offers you. If you've taken any time to analyze the data available to you, you probably have some interesting analytics on your business delivery. Whether you're in manufacturing, accounting, customer service, or another line of work - having all that data available to you is invaluable for helping you figure out how to optimize your organization. But what areas can you most easily optimize using the data available to you? ..."

"For over 20 years, organizations have been attempting to secure their networks and protect their data. However, have any of their efforts really improved security? Today we hear journalists and industry experts talk about the erosion of the perimeter. Some say it's squishy, others say it's spongy, and yet another claims it crunchy. Are they trying to say the perimeter is changing, or that the perimeter no longer exists?..."

"Big data can be overwhelming. But parse through it and you may find that it aids tremendously in marketing and sales. And this is just as true for direct sales as it is more traditional indirect sales via various advertising channels. Though Big Data may seem to be the exclusive domain of the mega-corporation, with its large teams made up of analysts and strategists, the truth is that with a little bit of work, the direct salesperson can leverage this information too. Here's how..."

"Public cloud providers will accelerate spending on data center hardware (servers, storage, and Ethernet switches), in the second half of the year, while spending on IT gear for traditional on-premise enterprise data centers will decline slightly, according to the latest data from IDC.

On-prem IT infrastructure will still account for more than 60 percent of all end-user hardware spending this year, these end users will have spent 4.4 percent less than they spent in 2015, according to the analysts. This is while public cloud providers are projected to increase their annual data center hardware spend by close to 19 percent this year, collectively buying $23.3 billion worth of equipment..."

"In this video from ISC 2016, Karl Schultz from the OpenHPC Community provides and update on software releases and other milestones..."

'OpenHPC is a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project whose mission is to provide an integrated collection of HPC-centric components that can be used to provide full-featured reference HPC software stacks. Provided components should range across the entire HPC software ecosystem including provisioning and system administration tools, resource management, I/O services, development tools, numerical libraries, and performance analysis tools.'

"The InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) and the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) today announced that 204 of the world's most powerful supercomputers accelerate performance through InfiniBand and OpenFabrics Software (OFS). At 41 percent of the TOP500 List, the InfiniBand fabric, together with OFS open source software, continues to be the interconnect of choice for the leading supercomputing systems. Furthermore, InfiniBand and OFS systems outperform competing technologies in overall efficiency, scoring an 85 percent list average for compute efficiency - with one system achieving a remarkable 99.8 percent..."

Michael blogs, "This is the sixth of six posts (the last one was Virtual Storage Appliances) where we're going to cover some practical details that help raise your SDS IQ and enable you to select the SDS solution that will deliver Storage on Your Terms. The sixth (and final) SDS flavor in our series is Containerized.

Containers are a relatively new entrant on the storage scene - and they're hot, because unlike virtual machines, they use shared operating systems..."

Cisco introduced ePOS ('electronic Point of Sale'), a standardized omni-channel solution for the traditional retail. The software platform was developed based on the experience Cisco made together with its project partners: shop fitting specialist Vitra and communications agency Serviceplan. The solution can be seen in 'WeShop', a demo shop that resides within the Cisco office in Eschborn near Frankfurt.

'Innovative solutions like ePOS turn shopping into a real experience for customers. Boundaries between physical and virtual points of sale disappear and retail is becoming competitive again,' said Oliver Tuszik, general manager Cisco Germany.

In an effort to apply data-driven insights to one of the most fundamental aspects of running a health care system, UPMC announced that it has formed Pensiamo, an independent company that aims to help hospitals improve supply chain performance through a comprehensive source-to-pay offering, including cognitive analytics with IBM Watson Health technologies. IBM is a minority owner of Pensiamo.

Fujitsu Limited, Oracle Corporation, and Oracle Corporation Japan today announced that they have agreed to form a new strategic alliance to deliver enterprise-grade, world-class cloud services to customers in Japan and their subsidiaries around the world.

In order to take advantage of cloud computing to speed innovation, reduce costs and drive business growth, organizations need IT partners that can deliver the performance, security and management capabilities that are demanded by enterprise workloads. To help organizations in Japan capitalize on this opportunity and confidently move enterprise workloads to the cloud, Oracle Cloud Application and Platform services - such as Oracle Database Cloud Service and Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud - will be powered by Fujitsu's datacenters in Japan. Under the new strategic alliance, Fujitsu will work to drive sales of robust cloud offerings to companies in Japan and their subsidiaries around the world.

VMware, a global leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility, announced that the 13th annual VMworld 2016 U.S. will be held Aug. 28-Sept. 1 in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay. Later this year, the 9th annual VMworld 2016 Europe will return to Fira Barcelona Gran Via Oct. 17-20 in Barcelona.

With the theme of "be_ TOMORROW," VMworld 2016 attendees can discover the technology, trends and people who are shaping the future of digital business. The event is four jam-packed days of general session keynotes, hundreds of panels, breakout sessions and labs on hot topics like Unified Hybrid Cloud, Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Cloud Management and Services, and Network Virtualization.

The Friday Five is a weekly Red Hat blog post with 5 of the week's top news items and ideas from or about Red Hat and the technology industry. Consider it your weekly digest of things that caught our eye.

CIO - Jim Whitehurst: "If it's important to the Linux community, it's important to Red Hat"

Business Insider - $13 billion Red Hat threw a wedding on stage at its big conference -- with the CEO as ring bearer

Windstream has completed network upgrades across 15 states to bring faster Internet speeds of up to 100 megabits-per-second (Mbps) to residential and small business customers in more than 1,000 markets.

Windstream now offers premium speeds of 50 Mbps to 100 Mbps to 26 percent of its customers and expects to reach 30 percent by the end of 2016. In addition, almost half of all customers have access to speeds of 25 Mbps or greater today.

'Expanding access to faster Internet speeds is our highest priority,' said Sarah Day, president of consumer and small business for Windstream. 'When we announced Project Excel last fall, we made a commitment to accelerate our plans to upgrade broadband speeds. This expansion and surpassing 1,000 markets that now have access to premium speeds are significant milestones that reflect the hard work of our employees and our commitment to continuing to make upgrades to our network.'